It took me several tries to complete the task of reading the president’s interview with the New York Times because the man is so stupid and so morally repellent that I found it necessary to take breaks to protect myself from the psychic pain of absorbing what he had to say. The man is a pathogen and our country has a compromised immune system.
I could pick almost anything to highlight from the interview to make my point, but I am going to go with the part that should have been the easiest for him. In the middle of the president erroneously explaining that the F.B.I. only began reporting to the Department of Justice during the Nixon administration “as a courtesy,” Ivanka showed up unannounced with her daughter Arabella who just turned six on July 17th. The president invited his granddaughter to show off her impressive knowledge of Chinese.
How could this go wrong?
ARABELLA KUSHNER: [enters room] Hi, Grandpa.
TRUMP: My granddaughter Arabella, who speaks — say hello to them in Chinese.
KUSHNER: Ni hao.
[laughter]
TRUMP: This is Ivanka. You know Ivanka.
IVANKA TRUMP: [from doorway] Hi, how are you? See you later, just wanted to come say hi.
TRUMP: She’s great. She speaks fluent Chinese. She’s amazing.
BAKER: That’s very impressive.
TRUMP: She spoke with President Xi [Jinping of China]. Honey? Can you say a few words in Chinese? Say, like, “I love you, Grandpa” —
KUSHNER: Wo ai ni, Grandpa.
BAKER: That’s great.
TRUMP: She’s unbelievable, huh?
[crosstalk]
TRUMP: Good, smart genes.
[laughter]
Trump manages to take a feel-good moment and turn it into an opportunity to assert the genetic superiority of his family. His granddaughter speaks Chinese which is cute and praiseworthy. That’s great, but family protective services should show up to shield her from the racist influence of her grandfather.
Literally everything about the interview is obnoxious and grating. Trump demonstrates an inability to understand historical facts that extends from what happened moments before in a meeting with Republican senators to the causes of Napoleon’s defeat during his invasion of Russia. Every story he tells is not just wrong but hit-yourself-in-the-head-with-a-hammer wrong.
Let’s look at what he says about the man he nominated to be his Attorney General. He says that the regrets choosing Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III for the job because Sessions recused himself from the investigation into Russian collusion in our past election. That’s an admission that he expected Sessions to help him obstruct justice and that he’s angry that Sessions rendered himself useless in that regard.
But let’s remember what actually happened.
During his confirmation hearing (which happened after Trump nominated him), Sessions testified that he had not had any meetings with members of the Russian government. That turned out to be a lie, and a lie that probably amounted to perjury. When his lie was exposed (which happened after he was confirmed), Sessions came under pressure to recuse himself from the investigation. He had to do this because Department of Justice guidelines compelled him to separate himself since he was now a possible witness and subject of the investigation. If Sessions had refused to recuse himself in those circumstances he would have instantly lost all credibility in the department and probably been rebuked by the DOJ’s Inspector General, too. The fact that he most likely perjured himself during his hearing made this a political necessity, too.
So, Sessions did what he was compelled to do and his deputy Rod Rosenstein was put in charge of the Russia investigation. Let’s look at how Trump remembers this happening.
TRUMP: Look, Sessions gets the job. Right after he gets the job, he recuses himself.
BAKER: Was that a mistake?
TRUMP: Well, Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.
Do you see the problem? The president nominated Sessions and he was confirmed before he realized that he needed to recuse himself. How could Sessions have told the president he was going to recuse himself before any of that happened?
Now, if you’re a stickler, you might argue that Sessions knew he had met with Ambassador Kislyak on multiple occasions during the campaign and that, as a result, he was a possible person of interest to the FBI’s counterintelligence investigators. He should have told Trump as much, and also told him that if he were asked about it in his confirmation hearings he would have to be candid about his contacts. Trump then could have decided whether he wanted to nominate someone who should, ethically, recuse himself. Obviously, he wouldn’t have done so.
TRUMP: So Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself. I then have — which, frankly, I think is very unfair to the president. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, “Thanks, Jeff, but I can’t, you know, I’m not going to take you.” It’s extremely unfair, and that’s a mild word, to the president. So he recuses himself. I then end up with a second man, who’s a deputy.
But Trump isn’t angry that Sessions failed to tell him about the meetings with Kislyak (assuming he did fail to do so, which is not assured). He doesn’t even seem to understand what happened at the confirmation hearing.
TRUMP: So Jeff Sessions, Jeff Sessions gave some bad answers.
HABERMAN: You mean at the hearing?
TRUMP: Yeah, he gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren’t. He then becomes attorney general, and he then announces he’s going to recuse himself. Why wouldn’t he have told me that before?
Nowhere in here does Trump acknowledge that if Sessions had told the truth at his confirmation hearing he would have been quite justifiably informed that he would not be confirmed unless he agreed to recuse himself. There’s no way Sessions could oversee an investigation that is going to need to investigate him. If Trump said that Sessions should have told him he was compromised, we could all agree with that. Maybe he did tell Trump and Trump didn’t care. Maybe Trump didn’t need to be told at all because he already knew. Regardless, this isn’t the focus of the president’s complaint.
His complaint is that he hired Sessions to put an end to the investigation and Sessions screwed up his answers at the confirmation hearing and lost the ability to shield him. But it’s more confused than that, because Sessions could not have known in advance that he’d get caught in a lie at his hearing, so he could not have told Trump ahead of time that he’d recuse himself.
His retelling of history just gets worse from here as he goes on to describe how Rod Rosenstein got to the point where he felt compelled to appoint a special counsel to investigate. Trump suggests that Rosenstein isn’t impartial because he’s from the heavily Democratic city of Baltimore, but he doesn’t acknowledge that he was the one who compromised Rosenstein’s ability to oversee the investigation.
Trump asked Rosenstein to craft a memo critical of FBI Director James Comey’s handling of the Clinton email investigation, which Rosenstein did. Then Trump blamed Rosenstein’s memo when he announced that he was firing Comey. Then he acknowledged that his decision to blatantly obstruct the investigation by firing Comey was made before Rosenstein crafted the memo and had nothing to do with the memo.
At that point, the circumstances of Comey’s firing became a criminal investigation and Rosenstein became a prime witness. He couldn’t head the investigation anymore, so he made the decision to appoint Bob Mueller to investigate.
Here’s how Trump tells his story:
TRUMP: Look, there are so many conflicts that everybody has. Then Rosenstein becomes extremely angry because of Comey’s Wednesday press conference, where he said that he would do the same thing he did a year ago with Hillary Clinton, and Rosenstein became extremely angry at that because, as a prosecutor, he knows that Comey did the wrong thing. Totally wrong thing. And he gives me a letter, O.K., he gives me a letter about Comey. And by the way, that was a tough letter, O.K. Now, perhaps I would have fired Comey anyway, and it certainly didn’t hurt to have the letter, O.K. But he gives me a very strong letter, and now he’s involved in the case. Well, that’s a conflict of interest.
Here is how Rod Rosenstein characterized what happened in his written statement for the record when he testified before the House and Senate:
On May 8, I learned that President Trump intended to remove Director Comey and sought my advice and input. Notwithstanding my personal affection for Director Comey, I thought it was appropriate to seek a new leader.
Rosenstein was told that Trump was going to fire Comey and was asked for input to help him justify it. He was pleased to do this, despite his affection for Comey. But when Trump suggested that his memo was the cause of Comey’s firing, Rosenstein got very irritated:
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was so upset with the White House for pinning the firing of FBI Director James Comey on him Wednesday that he was on the verge of resigning, an administration source told ABC News.
After Comey’s firing Tuesday night, White House officials said President Donald Trump acted on the recommendation of Rosenstein.
Basically, everything Trump said about Rosenstein is a lie or such a distortion that it amounts to a lie. Even when Trump says that “perhaps I would have fired Comey anyway, and it certainly didn’t hurt to have the letter,” that’s a lie. The letter was not written because Rosenstein was self-motivated to write it. It was not written in an effort to get Comey fired. It was not the cause of Comey being fired. Trump had already made the decision to fire Comey, which is what Rosenstein testified to under oath.
So, Trump totally mischaracterized this and created a conflict for Rosenstein which almost caused him to resign. This is what led to the appointment of Mueller, not the fact Rosenstein comes from Baltimore.
Everything in the interview is like this. It’s all funhouse mirrors and mostly false assertions that are as incriminating as they are intended to be exculpatory. If the New York Times were to interview Trump tomorrow and ask all the same questions, all the details would be different but the overall impression would be the same. The president lies so much and has such a distorted idea of what’s happening around him that he literally doesn’t know or care what is true and what is not.
What shines through it all, though, is his unapologetic intention to obstruct justice. He didn’t want Sessions to bow out of his appointment because he was compromised. He didn’t want Sessions to testify truthfully. He wanted Sessions to kill the investigation and he recused himself instead. For that, he cannot be forgiven.
This is all more evidence that Trump is providing against himself in the obstruction case. And he seems blissfully unaware of it, which is maybe the most disturbing thing of all.
The man has the nuclear codes and is responsible for handling our foreign affairs, including North Korea’s efforts to put nuclear weapons on ICBM’s that can reach the American shore.
The part where he claimed he had to go talk privately with Putin because he was bored since Akie Abe, seated next to him, didn’t speak any English was gold. I’m not sure what’s the “funnier” possibility, that he just chose to insult her with the first lie that popped into his head or that she pretended she didn’t speak English to avoid talking to him.
I would pretend to not understand English too!
If I had a hearing aid, I would turn it off in Trump’s presence to aviod laughter/puking depending on what he said.
I’d like to know how any decent interviewer keeps a straight face or keeps from smacking his forehead a million times. I would be alternating guffawing with laughter and covering my mouth in horror the whole time.
Someone tell him that the presence of cameras doesn’t mean that he is on the set of The Apprentice.
And I didn’t think anyone could make G.W. Bush sound intelligent! He’s a genius compared to Trump.
In the remarks on the health care bill he showed clearly that he doesn’t know what health insurance is, at all, even as he claims to be shepherding a gigantic revamping of the industry through Congress:
It seems to me the thing about the Sessions recusal is similar, though morally much more repugnant. But it’s not just that he’s evil, he doesn’t even live on the same planet. He thinks it’s Sessions’s duty as attorney general to defend him, even if it means committing perjury, and Sessions is a coward and laggard who won’t do it. He expects The Times to understand and appreciate how he feels about this.
The dinner “meeting”, just pleasantries. How do you do that for almost an hour? Can’t do it on a tarmac, dontcha know?
In terms of obstruction of justice, it’s even worse than that. He also criticized acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, and threatened to fire Robert Mueller if he investigates Trump’s business finances (which he’s doing). That’s all four of the current officials most responsible for overseeing the Russia probe, and all for basically the same reason.
Dude can’t start wearing a jumpsuit that matches his hair soon enough.
IIRC, all previous Presidents put their assets in a blind trust. I guess I thought that was the law. You can’t run a business and be President on the side. If you are conscientious, it’s a man-killing job. Oops! That leaves Trump out.
“What shines through it all, though, is his unapologetic intention to obstruct justice.”
To his supporters this is a feature not a bug. For them, there is no justice, only power. Trump flaunts it, and these people love him for it. Who’s going to stop him? Only the R.’s in congress presently have the ability, and as long as Trump is useful to them he will remain, at least until the midterms. The chances are slim that we can flip both houses of congress so that impeachment can proceed, but that probably the best chance we have to rid ourselves of this “venomous charlatan”.
The excepts seem very reminiscent of the transcripts of Hitler’s nightly “table talk” which were published after the war. It’s not generally a good idea for authoritarian demagogues to just let the tape machines roll, ha-ha. Those who have read through this ocean of shitspeak should have some medal pinned on them…
Of course Trumper is a fatuous imbecile, anyone with a lick of sense saw that during the course of odious Campaign 2016, if not, say, 30 years earlier. Trumper certainly didn’t trick the voters, at least as far as his personality, character or display of knowledge base. Of course he had/has no business being prez. That was abundantly, blindingly obvious as of Election Day 2016.
Giving Trumper the nuclear codes was the considered decision of the incompetent white electorate, with a decisive assist from our failed constitution. This is the deeper problem. That and the fact that they still are not concerned he has them. And nothing he says in interview after interview will cause them the slightest concern. They think it’s all a grand goof on gub’mint and “elites”.
In short, Trumper’s THEIR fool and that’s all that matters. “He’sabiznessman, Hedoesn’tknowpolitics, GIVE HIM A CHANCE!”, etc, etc. And if they have to retreat to “hedoesn’tknowanything”, they’ll be happy to do that as well! The question now is whether even Gotterdammerung can change their opinions.
Remember when McCain was blabbering at various hearings recently, kind of incoherent, and everyone wondered what was going on? I guess we have some idea now. I get the same feeling from this NY Times interview with Trump.
Reminds me more f all Capone with late stage syphilis.
It’s only been 6 months and the donald is acting like a man trying to dig himself out of an empty hole. I can not imagine the GOP allowing this to go on for 3 1/2 more years. At some point self preservation must kick in.
Objection, your Honor! Assumes facts not in evidence, to wit, ability to perceive reality and engage in rational thinking.
About the GOP–exactly–facts not yet in evidence. No reason to have the same false hope some still have about Trump Donald I and his White House.
Abandonment by his base is what it will take. Given the media empires staked on preventing that, it will be a long time.
I remain convinced that Trump knew exactly what was going on with Russia during the campaign at the very least from the 6/9/16 meeting and probably well before. Sessions was a key member of the Trump campaign and a surrogate like Giuliani. It’s been reported from several sources that he was the one who organized the trip that Carter Page made to Russia with the quid pro quo letter from Trump. It’s true that Trump talks like an incoherent drunk but that doesn’t mean he is ignorant about what the Russians did during his campaign. he just lies, lies and lies.
If Trump ordered an umprovoked nuclear attack woild everyone wpuld just ignore him?
I would hope so. I recall one (more actually) Soviet Premier was an alcoholic and would call his Generals and tell them to launch a nuclear attack on the USA. He would forget in the morning. The Generals had gotten together and decided to ignore him unless they thought the USSR was under attack. This all came out in Glasnost.
Of course when the SecDef is nicknamed “mad dog”…
When the Secretary of Defense is nicknamed “mad dog”, he might be independent enough to say “No”. Or he might not. He has a reputation for not being easily controlled. And yet he got promoted throughout his career. Go figure.
Like any other human organization, one gets ahead in the military in part through politicking, but it’s my understanding that it’s more of a meritocracy than most civilian endeavors. Competence is, after all, more starkly and essentially a life or death matter.
Weirdly “Mad Dog” is one of the least crazy people. Somehow.
And his attitude that no one can hold him accountable for anything. It is an attitude of absolute rule.
What I picked up on in your retelling of the quotes from the intereview is how much the cadence of his speech sounds like the movie version of a mob boss. People have already noticed how the drama is scripted like wrestling kayfabe. Of course, it’s phony.
But so far, he’s being given the run of the place. The GOP has completely failed to defend the country in this situation. Every single member of Congress, the RNC establishment, and the major spokespeople for the party, in contrast with the President’s shills.
And given what has happened to other interviewers, interviewers are afraid of crossing him.
Yes, one hopes that someone is reiterating to the military the whole matter of refusing illegal orders. The key people in this are the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And, from reports, there are some unhappy campers over his showcase attack on Syria for Xi Jinping’s benefit that nearly got us tangled up with Russian air actions over Syria.
We underestimate the deviousness at our peril. He is not a harmless buffoon. He is playing the responses and doing so with the advice of some devious strategists. He will conform to no norms whatsoever and meet no expectations whatsoever.
And his base still loves him because he so confounds and astounds writers like you. So what he is doing, unfortunately, is not yet self-defeating.
Your discovering just how deep the danger and corruption go are helpful when they lay out additional details of his support structure. But just a slack-jawed reaction to one of his interviews moves us nowhere. We already know it’s that bad. And we feel empathy for what you has to endure in order to report on it. Detox yourself. Re-engage with your neighbors.
No doubt he sees acting out with the nuclear codes as part of the kayfabe. Most world leaders are smart enough to try to build a diplomatic box around Trump with the people they already know in the US government and military. No doubt even Kim Jung Un is engaged in that as well. And Putin likely also sees him as a loose cannon, although a useful loose cannon.
Keep praying that the practical checks and balances of the rank-and-file worker bees in the executive and legislative branches eventually blunt the authoritarian strategy and the hijacking of the agencies where they’ve pursued their careers. And watch for the White House deploying political officers to try to break that resistance.
At some point he starts looking like the Wizard of Oz.
For those concerned about whether the military would forestall a nuclear strike order, it might be useful to compare the oaths taken by enlistees versus officers in our military:
http://www.militaryauthority.com/wiki/swearing-in-the-oath-of-enlistment-and-the-oath-of-office.html
Note that, while the enlistee swears to obey orders from the President (though even that is caveated by the “according to” clause), the officer swears his/her allegiance solely to the Constitution. Not a word about obeying the orders of the President.
Any rational analysis of whatever Trump says or does will fail because that’s not the field he and his play on. It’s Brand Trump promotion 24/7.
(Ivanka exploits her very young children on a daily basis. In corporate offices, and this goes treble for the Oval Office, no family member of the CEO engaged in a major interview would be allowed to just pop in with a kid in tow. She also has her daily (sometimes more) runway appearance outside her house. Fortunately, Melania takes a few days off after her runway and photo op appearances.)
Truth, facts, etc. are irrelevant to hucksters. It’s all about whatever sounds best for him/her in that moment. He’s also too old to absorb much of anything new about how the USG operates, particularly in those areas where he already possesses some false notions.